


To Other Hells and Back

by Kendrick_Harlow



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel & Claire Novak Friendship, Castiel is Jack Kline's Parent, Claire and Jack are family, Claire and Jack learn to get along, Claire feels super weird about it, Claire talks to Jimmy, Claire works on her issues with Castiel, Dysfunctional Family, Family, Gen, Jack Kline & Claire Novak Friendship, Jack and Claire are honorary Winchesters, Kaia Nieves Lives, Novak Family, Novak family reunion, Post-Episode: s13e10 Wayward Sisters, eventually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-22 06:13:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13757997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kendrick_Harlow/pseuds/Kendrick_Harlow
Summary: "Secrets could separate people, but they could also unify. And few things were quite as secret as conspiring to resurrect your dead friend from an alternate universe."Jack and Claire bond over trying to bring Kaia back from the grave.





	To Other Hells and Back

**Author's Note:**

> I can't help it. I really want these two to be friends. I also really want Kaia back. So here we are.

Winchester luck worked like a Venn Diagram: awful things in one circle, terrible things in the second circle, and an improbable calamity where the two met. Today—while not particularly awful, terrible, calamitous—followed those same rules.

Jack Kline inhabited the first circle. He’d taken to wandering the Earth, only to appear every other week with books, notes, and the occasional weird relic to add to the bunker’s warded storage room. The bunker’s collection of arcane knowledge became progressively stranger with his additions.

“He’s spreading his wings.” Dean dropped the pun with a smirk around his coffee mug. Castiel assented that the book-hoarding was a harmless enough action. As odd as the self-assigned task was, it seemed to help his adopted son cope with the latest string of near-disasters.

With all that said, Jack’s appearances in the bunker were irregular, unscheduled, and very often in the wee hours of the morning.

In the second circle stood Claire Novak, who tended to hunt alongside her Sioux Falls family these days. However, roughly every month and a half, the walls gave her claustrophobia, the voices of five people were too loud, and the air stifled her every breath. On those days, she embarked on solo hunts. Nothing too dangerous—just a bit of violent therapy. It offered a chance to chase off someone else’s ghosts as well as her own.

She saw Kaia in every person saved and every person lost.

That weekend, her solo hunt turned out more grueling than usual. Her shirt practically dripped blood, her muscles screamed, and staying at another sleazy motel was the least appealing thought she could fathom. She craved people-sounds that weren’t the awkwardly erotic moans of her pay-by-the-hour neighbors. With Jody’s house another six hours away, that left few options.

Claire found herself outside of the bunker, grating the jagged metal of a spare key into her palm. Dean had slipped it to her last time they’d seen each other. It was an offer—someone to talk to, someplace to hide, a guaranteed warm welcome.

She’d been in this driveway a half-dozen other times and had turned around every single one of them. She honestly liked Dean and Sam. They were her weird uncles and Dean’s tendencies to parent the people he liked made her laugh.

Castiel was another story.

She understood that all of the options had been crappy when Castiel had taken over her Dad’s body, and that they hadn’t gotten less crappy since. She understood that he tried to help her, even if it was too little too late in every case except for two. She understood all of this, and she didn’t hate him anymore. What she hated was that every minute with him erased a little of the clarity surrounding the memories of her real father. It was too easy to forget for a second. It got easier by the year. She wished she was stronger than that.

Instead, Claire hesitated in the driveway until the car’s interior heat leeched out, cooling the blood on her shirt to the degree that she shivered. Her second shirt, she reminded herself. The first one had been torn to shreds. Stepping out of this car literally anywhere but here would result in a call to the police.

Screw it. She got out her phone and fired off a quick text to Dean. _I’m in the area. Mind if I stop by?_

The reply was immediate, although from Sam’s phone rather than Dean’s. _Anytime. On our way back from a hunt. Be there in about an hour. You can let yourself in._

Grabbing her duffle, she began the long walk around to the door.

Claire had been in the bunker precisely once before. The details were hazed over by the grief and fear rolled into the memory. With her senses clearer, she first noticed that it smelled like this morning’s coffee, ancient paper, and the same stale smell that permeated most underground structures, her grandmother’s basement included. Her second impression was that the Winchesters could use a couch. Unfamiliar with the layout of the building, she settled into one of the wooden chairs, resigning herself to waiting until the Impala and its occupants arrived home.

A loud whoosh robbed her of that resignation.

In half a second, Claire leapt to her feet, the knife from her boot now brandished at a stranger doing his best impression of a golden retriever puppy.

“Um…” he said. “Hello?”

He wasn’t intimidated by her knife. That was never a good sign. “Who are you?” she demanded.

“Jack,” he replied. The name rung a bell. Wasn’t Jack the nephilim that the Winchesters had made friends with? The one who had literally brought Castiel back from the grave? The one who had opened the border to the Bad Place, tracked down Kaia, and dragged her into their insane, dangerous lives?

Claire scowled at him, but lowered the knife.

“What’s your name?” he asked simply, the way a child would.

“Claire.”

“Oh.” Jack offered her his most amicable, human smile. It was sad around the edges. That wasn’t his intention, but for all that she’d recognized his name, he’d recognized hers as well. Claire. A brave hunter. The girl who rescued Sam and Dean. Kaia’s friend.

The lingering guilt about Kaia’s fate never quite left him. Judging from Claire’s continuing scowl, she blamed him too. The corners of his smile dropped altogether. He rounded the table and took a seat at the other side, dropping the books he’d been carrying.

Claire remained standing. “Sam didn’t say anyone else would be here.”

“Sam doesn’t know,” Jack said. He cracked opened his book, more to avoid her eyes than to read it. “I…usually just come in.”

Note taken. Jack was more than a convenient friend to the Winchesters. That invitation was only given to the inner circle. Her stomach dropped as she tried to think of the reasons they’d fail to mention that. Cautiously, she sat down across from him, then puller her phone out under the table.

 _Jack’s here,_ she texted Sam, on the off-chance that this visit wasn’t as casual as Jack had made it seem.

A long minute passed. Then, _Yeah, that happens. You cool?_

She lied and said she was.

A tense few minutes passed before Jack commented, “You have blood on your shirt.”

“I was hunting.”

“Right.” He read another three lines in the book—written in a language Claire couldn’t even identify, much less read. With every glyph, Claire’s presence in the room weighed heavier. He supposed guilt operated that way. Eventually, the weight became too much and he buckled. “You’re upset,” he sighed. “I should leave.”

Jack didn’t need a fight on his hands tonight. Better to raise his hands in surrender now. Yet, all Claire had to do was say one word, “Kaia,” and it hit like a punch to the gut. His surrender had been in vain.

Claire caught the wince and went for the kill. One question had been burning a hole through her mind since she’d heard Jack’s name. “Why didn’t you bring her back?” Claire interrogated. “You brought Castiel back.”

“I tried.” Jack gestured to his book. “I _am_ trying, but I didn’t…bring Castiel back exactly. I just helped. And I tried to do the same with Kaia, but I can’t find her soul, which means it’s in the Bad Place. Even if I knew exactly how to bring her back, I would have to get _there_ first and I can’t…I can’t do that until I know I won’t break the universe.”

For the son of Satan, Claire was surprised by exactly how much empathy and sincerity Jack conveyed. She imagined that Jack had seen Kaia as little more than a tool; one not worth fixing. She was wrong. The inflection in his voice swore _She was my friend too. I miss her too._

Claire frowned at the tabletop, particularly at the SW and DW carved into it. “Doesn’t sound like something Sam and Dean would like.”

“That’s why they don’t know.” Jack pushed his hair out of his face. “They think it’s too risky. They would try to stop me. But Kaia didn’t deserve that. I dragged her into this. I owe it to her to try to fix it.”

The confession played up Claire’s own guilt. She’d promised to protect Kaia and had failed, but where she was powerless to make amends, Jack wasn’t. It all came down to simple logic.

If Claire wanted Kaia back, she needed to help Jack.

With a silent groan, she grabbed the sole book written in English and cracked it open. “Okay. Where are we at?”

And so it was that the two circles of this particular Winchester Luck Venn Diagram collided.

###

Secrets could separate people, but they could also unify. And few things were quite as secret as conspiring to resurrect your dead friend from an alternate universe.

As Claire dialed Jack’s number from The-Middle-of-Nowhere, Wisconsin, she ran through other excuses to call just in case a Winchester picked up instead. Or Castiel.

Jack and Castiel were closer than she’d thought.

That first night, Claire had been vastly entertained when the Winchesters came home and Jack’s first reaction was to stash all but one of the books like they were porn instead of artifacts. The one left out was clearly his cover story—something he would pretend to read in case anyone bothered to check. Then she’d noticed the way Jack lit up when Castiel walked through the door—and it was the way a kindergartener responded to their dad coming home. She’d meandered through the logic that Jack was Castiel’s nephew, but the sheer affection with which Castiel patted his shoulder in passing left her hollow and cold.

Jack was Castiel’s kid in every way but biological. Claire was biologically related to Castiel in a twisted way, though she was Jimmy’s daughter. Nevertheless, it was her Dad’s face with another child.

The warm smile Castiel offered her didn’t alleviate her turmoil much.

If it wasn’t for Kaia, Claire would have let her association with Jack end then and there. She chanted Kaia’s name in her head as she threw herself back into the present, where the dust clogged her nose and the sun’s blazing touch made her skin itch. The phone stopped one ring shy of voicemail. “Claire?” Jack answered.

“I’m hunting a Djinn,” she explained in lieu of greeting him. It was efficient, albeit rude. “You know about those yet?”

“A little,” Jack answered. “They induce hallucinations while they feed off the person’s blood.”

“Right,” Claire said. “You said you needed Kaia because she was a dream-walker. She helped you see the other world clearly. It might be crazy, but…Djinn magic could work. So. Want to go hunt a Djinn?”

 _Whoosh._ And there he was. One day, Claire would get used to the flying.

###

It took them a grand total of two days to track down the Djinn. They’d been hindered by a fully-tattooed gang, each member bearing the requisite ink. After a long night of background checks, Jack and Claire discovered that the Djinn was passing as a drug dealer with the best product in town. Part of his fashion “signature” involved a pair of ridiculously expensive sunglasses so dark that they hid any traces of blue glow. Claire had to admit—it was good camouflage.

The Djinn poisoned saline solution with its hallucinogen, let people inject themselves, then used the syringes to gather their blood. Most people passed the lightheadedness off as a nasty crash and no one was exactly marching into the hospital after shooting up.

Claire hated smart monsters.

It had gotten greedier, though, or perhaps hungrier, and a few out-of-towners went missing. Then another gang from the nearby city had stolen the “drug” to reverse-engineer, and promptly OD’ed. As it turned out, they’d ended up with a raw, lethal supply. The coroner’s report showed nine kids of weird. All in all, enough weird had piled up for it to take Claire’s notice and here they were, outside a drug den.

The building curled in on itself, as if it was in pain. It was the kind of place a person went if they didn’t want to be found. Not-so-coincidentally, it also matched typical Djinn behavior. Claire and Jack faked being a couple of hard-core partiers out looking for a little spice to add to their next shindig. Security thought Jack seemed innocuous enough to be some rich kid from the better part of town, and they thought Claire portrayed the kind of corruptive influence that would get a rich kid to bankroll her bad habits. The excuse got the hunters close enough to meet the dealer.

The Djinn was a little sharper than his friends. One whiff and he knew they were hunters. It was guns blazing from there. Jack used his power to hold the Djinn against a wall while Claire gutted the guy with a silver knife dipped in lamb’s blood. A few bullets glanced around them, never quite hitting, but Claire could see Jack losing track of everyone in the room. She scrambled to find the Djinn’s supply case. He’d had a key in his pocket and there was one lock in the room. She ripped the thing open to find a gray case.

“Got it!” she shouted. “Let’s hit the road.”

Jack knocked down the humans like dominoes and grabbed her arm.

If Claire thought watching Jack fly was disorienting, then she was never going to recover from being a _passenger_ on Angel Air. She gagged as they landed on the pavement. Then, when she regained her stability, the gagging morphed into cackles.

“What?” Jack asked.

She held up the case. “Dean and Castiel would freak if they found out I was about to help you do drugs.”

###

 _“I can see the other world._ ”

Jack’s eyes glimmered gold. Close up, it was pretty unnerving.

With a tenuous smirk, Claire commented, “You sound so high right now.”

“I think I am.” Jack blinked. The gold light faded.

It had been a week since their hunt/heist, and they’d finally found a concentration of Djinn poison that clarified Jack’s brief glimpse of the pathway to the Bad Place without disconnecting him from reality—not that Claire was sure it was possible to pull Jack offline. He healed from everything. If the Djinn poison was working, it was because he was letting it.

She leaned back against her car. All their tests had to be done in isolation for fear that it went wrong—ripping-open-a-hole-into-another-universe-and-not-being-able-to-close-it wrong. They perched on the side of a desert highway that saw maybe two cars an hour. Not a bad place to be doing drugs.

“I feel like such a bad influence,” Claire stated. “Which is weird because you’re literally the son of Satan.”

Jack shrugged. “I take after my Mom.”

“She must have been nice. Super-nice.”

“She was.” From what little he knew. His heart ached and it was all he could do to force a smile. “She’s in Heaven now.”

“Did you…” Claire stared at the ground. “Did you try to bring her back?”

The smile vanished. “I can’t. Castiel told me nephilim can’t bring back their mothers. Even archangel nephilim.”

He didn’t speak the word _nephilim_ gently. The syllables reflected the spite and fear behind the term. His inflection told the story of every time he’d been called a monster over his existence rather than his actions.

Steadfast, he continued, “I need to bring back Kaia. I need to save _someone._ ”

The sentiment resonated within Claire to the beat of her own heart. They were both desperate to be redeemed. She could find a kindred spirit in that, and so, slowly, Claire held out an arm. It was an offer she never made lightly.

Jack hugged like she was water and he was dying of thirst. As much as he loved his family, physical affection was pretty much limited to marching off to one’s death or coming back from it. Claire’s arms were plain reassurance.

“We’ll get Kaia back,” she promised, as much to herself as to him. “We will _both_ save her.”

###

Jack and Claire had a system. One of them would find a lead. They would call the other. Sometimes that lead was a hunt. Sometimes that lead was a spell. Sometimes that lead was as weak as bad coffee, acting only as an excuse to talk for a while. But they always called first.

Jack had never heard Claire pray before.

He never wanted to again.

The prayer wasn’t a beacon so much as it was a celestial leash. It yanked him out of a rare nap. Before he could really process how or why, he appeared in the middle of a suburban home, barefoot and bed-headed. All that registered was the blood. It seeped out from the back of Claire’s skull, staining her corn-silk hair scarlet. Her prayer had stopped.

A middle-aged woman held tightly onto Claire, as if she could stop the girl’s soul from leaking out, unaware that it had already gone. Jack recognized her as Jody Mills. Although they’d never officially met, Claire had shown him a picture. Jody jolted at his arrival. If it weren’t for her years of police experience, she would have fired a bullet at him on the spot. Not that it would have done much. She blinked hard and lowered the gun.

“You’re…Jack,” she said. Her surprise choked on shock. Another of her children lay lifeless before her.

Jack didn’t bother explaining his unexpected presence. The celestial leash that had brought him here now wrapped around his chest so tightly he couldn’t breathe. He collapsed to his knees. “What happened?” he demanded.

She pointed to four monstrous corpses in the corner of the room, piled up like dirty laundry. Her voice quaked. “We were ambushed. One of them got her gun.”

 _No._ It seemed to be the one word left in his vocabulary. _No, no, no._ Claire couldn’t be gone. He’d heard her praying _three seconds ago._

The denial quickly melted into determination. Claire would not join the death toll surrounding him. He had to save her. Then they had to save Kaia. That was _the plan._ Grace boiled inside him. He clenched his eyes shut and latched onto Claire’s arm.

“Jack?” Jody called. The lightshow accompanying his powers tended to raise concern. He ignored her.

Claire had to be his focus. Nothing else. He played through every memory, every emotion, every snatch of their association. Her soul. He had to find her soul.

With a shudder and a crash, he found himself crammed into a dark space with pointed edges that jabbed into his ribs. The glow of his power illuminated a menagerie of shapes that he couldn’t define. He shifted. Something fell over with a thump and the object poked farther into his ribcage.

Was this _Hell?_

Claire didn’t belong in Hell.

Before he could build up a proper righteous fury, muffled footsteps approached and light burst into his vision. It wasn’t the fiery orange he expected. With a little squinting, he could tell that it was an average incandescent bulb, silhouetting a tall figure. His pupils adjusted.

A closet. He was in a closet. What he’d thought were implements of torture were a few colorful pieces of plastic, labeled in a seemingly foreign language with words like “Lego” and “Nerf.” Toys, he was pretty sure, though had no idea how they could be construed as such. A tiny red hoodie sleeve drifted into his face. He knocked it aside so that he could see the man, who bore achingly familiar features.

“Castiel?” he said. Except it didn’t _feel_ like Castiel.

“No,” sighed the man, and he didn’t _sound_ like Castiel either. “If you’re looking for him, you’re out of luck. I’m Jimmy Novak.”

Novak was Claire’s last name. Jack perked up. “I’m looking for Claire. This is… a rescue mission.”

Jimmy Novak was hastily pushed aside by a head of familiar blonde curls and a helping hand. “Jack!” Claire exclaimed. “How did you get here?”

“I’m not sure,” Jack responded. His gaze shifted nervously to not-Castiel. “Is this Heaven?”

“Yeah.” She glanced behind her at the man, Jimmy. “Jack, this is my Dad.” The grin on her face could have lit a planet. She then gestured farther back. “And my Mom.”

“Hello,” Jack greeted as humanly as he could. He didn’t think he succeeded. Mild suspicion met his friendly wave.

“Dad, Mom,” Claire continued, putting a hand on Jack’s shoulder to demonstrate that he did not, in fact, _bite_ , “this is my friend, Jack.”

Jimmy stuck out his hand to shake. It was such a formal gesture. A prickle raced across Jack’s skin, as stinging as a mid-winter’s wind. He’d never seen Castiel’s face so indifferent toward him. He froze. Was this how Claire felt all the time? Because, as Dean would say, this _sucked_.

Jack might have stood there looking like a deer in headlights all day if Claire didn’t intervene with a light shoulder-nudge. Jack snapped out of it and shook Jimmy’s hand.

“You said you were here to save Claire,” Jimmy said.

“I am,” Jack confirmed as he examined a room full of reasons that Claire wouldn’t _want_ to be saved. She had her parents, her childhood home, everything she had been mourning for the last decade. Jack’s shoulders fell. “But I might have been wrong.” He turned to the girl who had become his best friend. She glowed in this place. All of the shadows beneath her smile had faded. How could Jack want to rip that away from her? “If she wants to stay here, I’ll leave.”

Claire pursed her lips. It wasn’t a choice she’d ever fathomed she’d have to make. Until Jack arrived, the ocean of pain she’d carried for most of her life had eased out into low tide. She was at peace. Now that he was here, she remembered Jody and Alex and Patience and, most importantly, _Kaia._ This place was actual Heaven, but how could she consider leaving them?

“Claire, sweetie,” said Jimmy, “can we talk to you?”

He ushered her and her mother into the hallway. If the situation weren’t so dire, Claire would have snickered at the image of Jack standing awkwardly alone in her childhood bedroom, wearing only a T-shirt and flannel pajama pants. Claire guessed he’d rolled straight out of bed to come save her sorry ass.

Her last living thought had been a half-prayer that he was there.

The memory sobered her.

“Claire,” her father called to her, both hands on her shoulders. Now that reality was leaking past Heaven’s morphine-like atmosphere, she _saw him._ She saw the wrinkle between his eyes and the turn of his mouth and the lack of rigidity in his stance. She noticed every detail that made him Jimmy Novak. Likewise, she recalled every detail that made him _not-Castiel_. Despite sharing a face, her Dad and Castiel were nothing alike. That the line had ever been blurred astounded her.

He continued speaking. “You can go back if you want to.”

“What?” she asked. She jabbed a thumb behind her to her childhood room. “But…you guys are here.”

“And we always will be,” her mother promised. “We love you and of course we want you here, but you’re young. There’s still so much out there for you. You have _another family_. We don’t want to keep you from that.” Her mother kissed the top of Claire’s head. “Heaven can wait.”

Claire’s tear-ducts and throat ached. It was a familiar sensation that she could usually stave off. This place, though—it made her vulnerable. A warm drop slipped down her cheek. “I love you, too.” She threw herself at her parents. She couldn’t remember any hug that had felt warmer or safer. “I’ll be back, I promise.”

“You better be,” Jimmy said, “or you’re grounded.”

She choked a little on the pathetic, hysterical giggle lodged in her esophagus. “Oh, man, Jody’s not going to let me leave the house for a month.”

“At least I know you have good friends.” He glanced toward the other room. “Weird friends, but good friends.”

“You have no idea,” she scoffed. The conversation tapered, and her cheer along with it. She pulled away. “I guess I should get back to them.”

“Just one more thing,” he said. “And this is important. Amelia, can I talk to Claire alone for a minute?”

That never boded well. Claire could speculate what this was about. Her mother drifted away, possibly to go interrogate Jack. Jimmy dug up the warmest, most fatherly smile he possessed, and Claire immediately thought of the way he’d looked after her first day of school.

“I am so proud of you,” he said. Her stomach fluttered. “You are strong and brave, and I’m sorry that my choices made your life so hard. I want you to know that I never meant to leave you behind. You mean more to me than anything else.”

“I know,” she murmured. She hesitated before continuing. “Castiel told me.”

Jimmy rubbed at his face. The angel in question remained to be a difficult subject. “Your mother said he’s been looking out for you.”

“He is.” Claire tried to put on a brave face. She didn’t want her Dad suspecting exactly how hard it was going to be going back. “I know it doesn’t make up for what happened, but he’s there if I need him. Besides, he’s not as much of a dick as he used to be.”

“Claire,” Jimmy said, “you don’t _have to be_ mad at him because of me. I made my own choices. It’s better that it wasn’t you.”

She stared at her feet. “He has your face, though, and I don’t want to feel like I’m replacing you.”

“I know you’re not.”

The words stripped years of weight off her shoulders. He’d given an absolution she hadn’t known she’d been searching for. She wiped at her eyes. “Thank you.”

“I love you, Claire.”

“I love you, too, Dad.”

They walked back into the room. Claire exchanged a heartfelt goodbye and a final embrace with her parents. She got the sense that Amelia had given Jack some kind of shovel talk in their absence. His face flickered between confusion and mild fear. Claire smirked and looped her arm through his. “Okay, Dorothy, time to go back to Kansas.”

“We’re going to the bunker?”

She couldn’t help but snicker. “It’s a reference, dumbass. Remind me to show you _Wizard of Oz_.”

She waved one last time at her parents. Jack, catching on, tried to copy in his own special, overenthusiastic manner. She shook her head. What a dork.

There was a loud whoosh, the pressure of being deep underwater, and the disorientation of riding the carnival tilt-a-whirl for twenty minutes straight.

She woke with a gasp.

###

Jody was a rock, and Claire had never appreciated it more. She took their explanation in stride—from Claire’s unintended prayer up through Jack hauling her back down to Earth. All while staging the bodies to look like a murder-suicide.

At the end, Jody gave Jack an earnest “Thank you.”

“Claire’s my friend,” he responded. Jody heard the full meaning in that statement. A Winchester would die for a good friend. And Jack, regardless of his birth parents, was raised a Winchester.

“About that.” Jody hustled them out to the car. “Since when are you two friends?”

“We met at the bunker,” Claire said. “A few months back. He helped me with a hunt or two.” It was an oversimplification of what their relationship had slowly morphed into. She had called to him in the millisecond before a bullet tore through her head. That was instinct. That was _trust._

“Uh-huh,” Jody replied skeptically. Her BS-meter twitched. Learning body language proved essential for her job. Claire’s and Jack’s read _comfortable._ More comfortable than “a hunt or two.” She decided to drop it for now. “I’m glad.”

They piled into the car. Jack’s eyes drooped more by the minute, and friends didn’t let friends fly tired, so in the backseat he went. Apparently, bringing people back from dead was taxing for growing nephilim. They’d celebrate later about what this meant for Kaia.

###

Claire was 100% positive that if Castiel hadn’t been an angel, he would have had a coronary. He launched out of his seat in the kitchen when she and Jack finally managed to rouse themselves from sleep. Without words, Jody conveyed that she’d done her best to calm him down, and that he’d gotten here just after dawn in another one of his _vintage_ borrowed cars. She’d called him when they’d gotten back last night. He must have driven straight through.

“You’re both okay?” was his first question.

“Yeah,” Claire said, tugging at her sleeves, “we’re fine.”

“Does Heaven know?” Jack asked, whispering as if afraid they might hear him.

“They do,” Castiel replied, resting a hand on his adopted son’s shoulder, “but they don’t know it was you.”

Claire considered asking who _else_ would have broken her out of Heaven, except it would have been a stupid question. The answer stood right in front of her. “They think it was _you?_ ”

“And we should let them,” Castiel responded. “We don’t need them to panic.”

Claire wondered why they weren’t panicking already. There were few reasons, and most of them included that the angels weren’t surprised. Hell, maybe they’d even _expected_ it and decided it was easier to let him take Claire back than to fight him, especially if there were Winchesters in tow.

 _Goddamn,_ Claire thought a bit blasphemously. A mission like that wasn’t something you did out of guilt. A mission like that was something you did for _family._

Astonishment stilled her limbs as she analyzed Jack and Castiel in a new light. They legitimately cared about her as a person. She was more than an old promise, a guilty conscience, or a co-conspirator. And everyone except her knew it.

Castiel remained oblivious to her revelation. Methodically, he explained, “I checked the angel warding on the house, put an urn of holy oil in the trunk, and left you some of the angel blades we’ve collected.” Despite his gravelly voice, he came across as a nervous mother ensuring that their kid had their lunch, medications, and emergency contacts before sending them off to their first day of camp.

“You think they’ll come after her?” Jody asked.

“No,” Castiel said, “but precautions never hurt.”

Claire raised an eyebrow. “You came all this way to stock the weapons vault?”

Castiel’s eyes squinted beneath the furrow of his brow. Bewilderment and concern all at once. It was a very _Castiel_ expression. He said, “I came to make sure you were safe, Claire.”

“Oh.” It was so sincere. She stared at him. For the first time, her brain didn’t blur the line between _Castiel_ and _Dad_. It didn’t accuse him of trying to replace her father. It acknowledged him as her Dad’s weird-ass twin. Identical, but not indecipherable. She thought about what her father had said up in Heaven. He’d made his own choice. Castiel had been a recruiter for a war, and Jimmy had put on a helmet and grabbed a gun.

Before she could change her mind, Claire shifted forward and awkwardly wrapped her arms around him. “Thanks,” she said.

“Of course.”

She caught Jack beaming off to the side, like her and Castiel getting along was everything he’d ever wanted and more. She reached out an arm with a sigh. “You, too, nerd.”

He happily joined the fray.

Claire had such a bizarre family.

###

The final steps were in place. It had taken another few months for Jack and Claire to put together their plan, their progress hindered by the watchful eyes of their collective guardians.

There had also been the matter of assembling a few spells. With practice, Jack could materialize things like Three Musketeers bars, intricate Lego models of famous cities, and the occasional tree. A human body was going to be a little trickier. They’d exhausted the entire Men of Letters library and then some before cobbling together an answer.

The second complication was that they had to do it in advance, knowing Jack would be winded after all the heavy lifting to come on D-Day. Trying to materialize a fully functional human body after opening a rift in the universe and tracking down a specific soul wasn’t ideal.

Claire desperately hoped no one checked their car. It would be incredibly tricky explaining why they had the replicated corpse of one Kaia Nieves in their trunk.

She doubted many people came out this far, though, even cops. As per the plan, no humans surrounded them for miles as they prepared.

Carefully measured Djinn poison? Check.

Vessel for Kaia’s soul? Check.

Weapons? Check, check, and check.

Claire handed the syringe to Jack with one hand, her knife gripped tight in the other. “You ready, musketeer?”

“As ready as I can be,” he said.

“Then let’s go kick some ass and save our friend.”

He pumped the Djinn poison into his arm and within seconds, scorching gold light consumed his irises and sparked off of his skin. The atmosphere exploded with the kind of heat found in deserts during mid-summer. Claire knew better. The temperature had remained a steady 72. The faint burn was Grace.

A sharp crackle signaled the opening of the fissure. To anyone passing, it would have appeared to be a bolt of lightning stuck in time. Jack caressed it with his fingertips. “It’s good.”

“So what are we waiting for?” Claire grasped his hand and leapt through the rift. The Bad Place was as azure and abysmal as she recalled, and its wet, heavy air strained her lungs. Far-off rustling hinted at incoming danger. Claire aimed her blade toward it. “Work fast.”

Jack closed his eyes and searched. The soul-gathering structure here was vastly different than home. Instead of Heavens and rooms, there were ebbs and flows. One pulled harder than the rest and felt like home. He followed it.

Meanwhile, the first of the curious Freddy Kruger creatures burst from the shadows. Claire side-stepped, spun around behind it, and then drove her knife up through its throat. She’d faced dozens already. She knew all their weak spots. Their peripherals sucked and they put themselves off-balance when they turned. Agility kept you alive. Claire thanked the two years of ballet she’d taken before her life had gone to hell.

The creatures soon learned to come in pairs. Nothing new. When they attacked, the smart ones stayed spaced out, understanding exactly how easy it would be to run into each other. It gave Claire time between onslaughts. Rarely was it enough to recover. By the seventh one, she was sweating bullets and a roar sounded in the distance.

“Got her!” Jack shouted.

“Then move your ass,” she responded.

Jack leapt through the portal, Claire in tow. The rift snapped shut behind them. Great, thought Claire. That had worked.

Jack kept his hands clasped tightly together, like he’d caught a firefly. A faint glow seeped out between his fingers. Claire made quick work of removing Kaia’s body from the trunk. She set it down on the nicest clearing she could find and unwrapped the tarp, plus two layers of bubble wrap. The latter had been Jack’s idea. He either overestimated how fragile humans were, or didn’t want his careful craftsmanship to be damaged in any way.

Jack eased his way onto his knees beside Kaia. The rigidity of her normally expressive face ate at him. It would be over soon. With a quiet prayer to a grandfather he wasn’t sure cared, he un-cupped his hands. A star burst forth from them and hovered for a minute over the body. Jack smiled at it gently. “Welcome home, Kaia,” he said.

The star seeped into the vessel’s skin.

Kaia’s eyes snapped open.

“What. The. Hell,” she gasped. She bolted up straight. Gawked at Claire and Jack. Then repeated, “What. The. _Hell_.”

“Sounds about right,” Claire agreed. Her chest exploded with relief. She was sure her smile was about to crack her face in half. “Told you I’d protect you.”

Kaia stared at her in disbelief. “I was dead.”

“We brought you back,” Jack responded, as if it was the simplest thing in the world.

“But… _how_?”

“Will power,” Claire said. “Also, you know, Jack’s ridiculous amount of Grace helped.”

“Just a little,” Jack conceded. His smile abruptly morphed into a wince. “And the angels noticed. We should get out of here.”

Claire promised Kaia all of the explanations she wanted once they were in the car. The nice, safe, warded car full of weapons. Jack claimed the back seat, arming himself with the angel sword Claire had stolen once-upon-a-time. Kaia shivered anxiously in shotgun as Claire thrust the pedal down and they peeled out of the deserted lot.

###

They returned to a full house. A very full house. If Claire thought coming home past curfew had ever been bad in her foster homes, it had nothing on facing Jody, Dean, and Castiel all at the front door, arms crossed. Granted, Jack had to call Castiel after Angel Radio went haywire, and Claire had to call Jody to let her know to expect another resident, but this was one hell of an assembly. Claire squeezed in the door, at the front of the dimension-hopping trio.

“…Sup?” she greeted while scanning the room. Everyone present and accounted for. Even Donna and Sam lurked in the back, well behind the parenting frontline. “How did you all get here so fast?”

Patience raised a hand. “I had a vision that something was going to happen and we all needed to be here.” Going by the way her lips twitched, she’d had an inkling about what that _something_ was and had refused to share with the class. She darted forward when Kaia finally walked through the door accompanied by Jack, and wrapped the girl in a fierce embrace. “It’s good to have you back,” she said.

“It’s good to not be dead,” Kaia replied. She noticed that Claire and Jack were not getting past the Parent Frontline anytime soon and quickly slipped toward Alex, pausing only to give Jody a sideways hug.

Jody decided it would be best if she started the interrogation. “Why didn’t you tell us?” she asked Claire and Jack outright.

“Would you have let us do it?” Claire challenged.

“That’s not the point,” Dean said. “The point is that you don’t do risky crap like that without telling someone.”

“We had a plan,” Jack insisted.

“Yeah, well, plans go wrong.” Dean side-eyed Castiel, who had so far remained silent, two fingers massaging his left temple. Castiel was a prime example of how wrong a plan could go, especially when kept from your only source of backup.

“We’re _hunters_ ,” Claire emphasized. “You can’t protect us from everything.”

“We are unfortunately very aware,” Castiel said, voice low and lamenting. He couldn’t dwell on that. He had to be logical about this. “But consider this: you risked more than your safety. You risked Kaia’s soul and you risked endangering the rest of the world. So maybe you don’t care that we would never have known what had happened to you. Fine. But I’d like to think you wouldn’t risk this universe unnecessarily.”

Well, _damn._ Claire caught Jack’s shoulders sagging in her peripherals and forced hers not to do the same. Problematically, she was staring at three people who had saved her life on various occasions, and it was tough being guilt-tripped under those circumstances.

Jack caved. “I’m sorry.”

 _Push-over._ Claire straightened her spine. “I’m not apologizing for doing what I had to to save Kaia,” she maintained. She could see Jody preparing Round Two, so she pushed through. “But, I dunno, I guess we could have left a note or something.”

After an exchanged glance, the mutual consensus seemed to be that their apology was good enough. Dean clapped them both on the shoulders, then gave them a gentle shove toward Kaia. “Alright. Go celebrate. We can talk more about this later.”

“More?” Jack whispered to Claire.

“You don’t get in trouble much, do you?” Claire retorted. She jerked her head behind her, in the direction of _the adults_. “Trust me, they’re not letting this go anytime soon.”

The rest of the night carried on smoothly. They ordered pizza, broke open the booze for the over-21s and close-enough-to-21s, and engaged in a vicious game of Uno. Honestly, Claire had been on hunts less aggressive than that Uno game.

The Winchesters and Castiel booked a motel room for the night, yet lingered in Jody’s kitchen well after most of the crowd had passed out.

“Do we take him with us?” Castiel wondered, observing as Jack slept haphazardly on the sofa.

“Let him sleep,” Jody said. “You can pick him up in the morning.”

Donna pointed at the clock behind her. “Eh, _later_ in morning.”

“Much later in the morning,” Jody agreed.

Sam leaned back in his chair, arms behind his head. “I still can’t believe they did all that.”

“No kidding,” Dean said. They’d heard snatches of the Adventures of Claire and Jack over the course of the night and it had been no small amount of planning. If he wasn’t so mad about the secrecy, he would have been impressed. Gold stars all around.

“It’s not like you haven’t done the same,” Jody pointed out.

“Yeah, but we’re _us_.”

“Have ya met those two?” Donna rejoined. “They’re practically Winchesters themselves.”

“You do tend to act recklessly,” Castiel acknowledged, aiming a judgmental look toward Sam and Dean.

Donna howled with laughter. “You’re not excluded here, sunshine.”

Castiel’s forehead crinkled while Dean snorted into his beer.

“All I have to say is,” Dean continued, “if we thought those two were trouble on their own, it’s got nothing on them working together.”

Sam wavered on that. “I don’t know,” he said. “They seem to make a pretty good team.”

###

In southwestern Nevada, a man sprinted. Not for recreation, notably. For his life. From a teenage girl with eyes that glowed like small suns. Despite her short legs, she sprinted like an Olympian. He found himself thrown to the pavement in a matter of minutes, a machete pressing into his left arm.

“Is it money you want?” he asked. “I can give you money. You don’t have to do this.”

“Yes,” she said, “I do.” And she began cutting.

He screamed. Most people would during spontaneous, unmediated amputation. For all that he struggled, he couldn’t shake her. God, she was strong.

He imagined his life to be over until a broad silver blade slashed its way out through her chest. Her eyes flared bright enough to leave him temporarily blinded. Her cry—deafening. After her body dropped, he drifted in a senseless abyss for what felt like hours. As reality filtered back in, he heard a young woman remark, “Angels possessing Amazons. That’s a first.”

“It doesn’t look like the angel had full control,” replied a more masculine voice. “Why would it kill someone in its vessel bloodline?”

“Yeah, we’re gonna have to look into that.” The girl noticed him stirring. She nodded his way. “Hey. You. You good?”

“No, my arm…” But as he looked at his arm, he realized there wasn’t a scratch on it. “What?”

“You’re welcome,” the boy replied, helping him to his feet.

The man swayed on the spot. His brain struggled to keep up. The chain of events in his memory didn’t correlate with what he’d always perceived to be the real world. Yet, these two treated the bizarre as an everyday occurrence. He watched, dazedly, as the girl took out a perfectly ordinary notepad.

“Now,” she said, flipping a page, “considering we just saved your ass, mind answering a few questions?”

She sounded like this was an interview for some fluff piece for the local news. Was that meant to be calming? Because it wasn’t. “Y-yeah, fine, anything,” the man eventually stuttered out. “But I’ve got one first.”

“Yes?” replied the boy. His smile was too serene to be natural. It fell just shy of the soothing intent behind it. In contrast, the girl’s raised eyebrow conveyed a more callous personality.

Although half-tempted to run, the man managed to blurt, “Who the hell are you guys?”

The girl smirked. It was no less intimidating and left the man considering that he might not want to know the answer to his question. The girl, however, obliged.

“I’m Claire,” she said, “and this is my cousin Jack.”

The boy offered a pleasant yet overenthusiastic wave at her introduction, portraying a true horror movie suburbanite with his golden hair and cheerful disposition, despite the splotches of blood on his shirt.

Claire gently kicked the corpse on the ground. “We hunt monsters.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Let me know if there are any typos. I do all my own editing, so sometimes things slip past me.


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